"Also, for what it's worth, the jury is still out at this point if letting Jim and Pam get together DIDN'T ultimately hurt The Office."

Not really. The jury may be out on how much longer the show can last, but those two have been together for two and a half seasons now and I don't think any dip in quality can really be attributed to putting them together. More likely the show has simply run its course and begun to repeat itself, like most shows after 5 years. I think it's an incredibly tough case to make that the show would be BETTER if they were kept apart.

I was going to say, TV couples we (the audience) had to wait for to get together, and then were rewarded when they got together (the audience was rewarded, not necessarily the couple, e.g. Sam and Diane). But didn't Dave and Lisa hook up almost immediately on NewsRadio?

Couples who fit into Alan's theory that Moonlighting did not go downhill because they put the two leads together but that they put them together because the show was already in decline.The logo proves Alan's point and feeds into recent discussions about Chuck: Let them get together then go on with the show.

How about shows that survived regardless of the romantic status of the shipper couple because there are other plots and characters?

Instead of Gretzky Face, I would nominate Nash Face.That said, I was actually at the Opening Ceremonies and it was pretty awesome regardless of that glitch. It really makes a difference not having to listen to television commentators drone on about stupid facts during the parade of nations. And I haven't even bothered checking out the NBC coverage of the ceremonies, because when you mix up Terry Fox and Michael J Fox, you really haven't done any research.

The Nag has probably come the closest, but since you're all circling around the same tiny runway, may as well spell it out at this point:

Shows featuring sexual tension between two characters that managed not to screw it up, whether by putting them together quickly (Dave and Lisa), doing an endless (and funny) series of break-ups and reconciliations (Sam and Diane), getting them together after just enough struggle that it felt momentous but not so much that people got annoyed (Jim and Pam) or just letting the tension percolate under the surface (Lenny and Carl).

Moonlighting screwed up by dragging things out way too long, in part because of production problems, in part because Willis and Shepherd hated each other.

I guess everything relies on personal opinion, but I thought that Sam and Diane were broken up because as a couple they turned out be as interesting as... well, Maddie and David. So I'm not sure that I agree that their romance was successful - although I supposed I will concede that by finally breaking them up, the show managed to survive what could have been much worse.

I actually think the loss of the Jim and Pam will they/won't they tension IS a big part of why the show is slipping. Whenever they went wacky on wacky on one side of the show, the Jim/Pam relationship (even if it was fun in a given episode) gave the writers a grounded reality. They haven't figured out how to replace that since then without being boring. As a result, some of the more madcap situations the characters get into tend to feel like they are spinning off the rails.

Not to threadjack into a discussion of "The Office" but I'll do it anyway.

I agree with your premise that Jim and Pam are the primary grounding influences that offset the madcap comedy. While that was an easy go to in the first two seasons, they really began to break that pattern with Jim in Stamford in season three and for those of us who liked the Michael Scott Paper Company, the Jim/Pam relationship was almost irrelevant.

Was the show consistently better prior to putting them together? Yes. But it was also fresher

By putting Jim and Pam together, the creators managed to maintain a high (if not as high) level of relatively grounded comedy whereas dragging it out any longer would have almost definitely turned into a series of quickly diminishing returns.

While the show may be less than it was, I for one do not find these two as a couple boring at all. Insufferable on occasion, but then Jim in particular had a tendency to lean that direction even when Pam was engaged to Roy.

I could not disagree more about Sam and Diane, Ginger. That is one of my all-time favorite TV couplings. They were a wonderful juxtaposition of differences that worked. The show also did a terrific job of having fun with the on-again, off-again nature of the romance, to the point where it got a little meta about it.

Then again, I'm one of the few people who seemed to really enjoy Diane Chambers and Shelley Long in general. I think she had a very tough job, playing that brand of obnoxious in a way that could still be sympathetic to an audience. I was always strangely rooting for their reunion, and felt very sad when they broke up for good in one of her rare return visits to the show.

Does Newsradio really count as sexual tension? As I recall, they got together in the second episode.

This did get me thinking about Sportsnight, which had a terrible and great handling of it: Dana and Casey was awful (especially Dana's ludicrous "plan") but Jeremy and Natalie was perfectly handled, including their rocky points.

And HIMYM had one well handled and one poorly with the same character. I thought Ted and Robin were never really believable. But I though the build up of Robin and Barney was great (too bad they torpedoed it so quickly).

Finally, on the Chuck controversy. My problem with the show isn't that Chuck and Sarah haven't gotten together. It's that season 2 built so much momentum and then this season has really put the breaks on it with needless acrimony and more vague over-arching plots. (What the hell do fulcrum and the ring do exactly, other than "be spies").

The mention of Sports Night reminded me of yet another source of sexual tension that I personally thought was handled very well, that being Josh Lyman and Donna Moss on The West Wing. I think the key to the success of that particular situation was that the tension between the two never really took up much of the real-estate on the show, and spent a lot of time just on the edge of the show's radar, kind of like Lenny and Carl, I guess. Also even though it was incredibly gratifying when they did finally hook up it never seemed like it was inevitable, and it was entirely likely that nothing would come of it, and that wouldn't be so bad either.